Influenza, Sideways

Hello, everyone! Influenza, influenza, influenza. Influenza? Influenza. Influenza influenza, influenza – influenza – influenza, influenza!

It’s that time of year in the Northern Hemisphere, following up last year’s busy season, and a terrible one in the Southern Hemisphere in the interim. At this point, for your general ambulatory patient, I hope you’ve stopped sending swabs. If you think they have it, they probably do – although, there is some respiratory syncytial virus out there, too.

But, I’ve also been surprised by a couple of people who didn’t look like typical influenza, and this little expert commentary is a nice reminder of the less-common manifestations of influenza infection. The respiratory compromise is well-documented, but patients can not uncommonly become seriously ill with myocarditis, myositis, and viral encephalitis, as well as causing less serious serious hepatic injury and acute tubular necrosis. There have also been case reports implicating influenza less frequently in a scattershot of clinically interesting entities.

Just in case you weren’t getting enough influenza in your life.

“The hidden burden of influenza: A review of the extra- pulmonary complications of influenza infection”
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/irv.12470/abstract [open access]